Oldest Human Fossils?

A team of scientists say that remains found in Morocco are human, Homo sapiens. The scientists also say these folks lived about 300,000 years ago.

They were around 100,000 years earlier and about 2,000 miles away from where we thought Homo sapiens showed up. If their identity and age is confirmed, we’ll be rewriting and rethinking our knowledge of humanity’s origins.

Other scientists say T. rex may not have been fluffy. It looks like the big dinosaur lost its feathers somewhere along the line.

Opportunities for Appreciation

I’m a Christian, a Catholic, so I accept that God is creating a good, orderly, and knowable world. (Genesis 1:31; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 268, 279, 299, 301)

I’m also fascinated by (real) science.

Each time we learn something new about how this universe works, it’s a new opportunity to appreciate God’s work. (Catechism, 283, 341)

I don’t see that as a problem.

Using the brains God gave us seems much more reasonable than fearing that we’ll awaken cosmic horrors, or ‘offend the spirits’ by showing an interest in God’s work. (December 16, 2016; July 15, 2016)

Because I’m a Christian, I see time as a characteristic of this universe, not an eternal constant; and basically linear.

I figure God could have created a static universe that started in a perfect state, and stays that way. But that’s not how our current home works. This universe is in a “state of journeying” toward perfection that we haven’t reached yet. (Catechism, 302)

This Universe as a Desktop Project

Like I said, I’m not worried that we’ll ‘learn too much.’

I’m also not concerned that I’ll go someplace where God can’t see or hear me.

This universe is a desktop project: from God’s viewpoint. That’s being very anthropomorphic.

Beautiful poetic imagery notwithstanding, God doesn’t sit on a throne at some particular place in this cosmos.

The Almighty, the I AM, is beyond this universe: and “here” in each place that can be, is, or has been; immediately present at all times, past, present and future. (Catechism, 300)

As a Christian, I take God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, very seriously.

That doesn’t keep me from realizing that everyone has wondered where we came from, what we’re doing, and where we’re going. Folks have come up with quite a few ideas. It’s part of being human. (Catechism, 285)

The natural human desire to know may be a reason Ussher worked out his timetable. What I’m not sure about is why so many folks still insist that the universe started at a particular day near the autumnal equinox in 4004 BC. (March 10, 2017; October 28, 2016)

Ussher’s chronology was pretty good scholarship, three and a half centuries back. But we’ve learned a great deal since then.

It Happened Earlier

‘It happened earlier’ seems like a recurring theme in our study of Earth’s past, and ours.

Ussher’s estimate of a few thousand years was topped in 1779, when the Comte du Buffon measured how fast a sphere cooled.

His estimate for Earth’s age was about 75,000 years.

About a century later, using different criteria, the 1st Baron Kelvin decided Earth could be anywhere from 20,000,000 to 400,000,000 years old.

Most scientists were pretty sure that anatomically modern humans, folks who look pretty much like the current model, got started about 200,000 years back.

We’re learning that the number may be off by about 100,000 years. Folks who look like us may be a whole lot older.

There’s going to be lively debate about this, for good reason.

My guess is that we’ll need more evidence before the question gets resolved. But if we do have deeper roots, I won’t be surprised. We’ve been learning that quite a few things happened earlier than we thought.

Each time we do, it’s an opportunity for greater admiration of God’s work. Like I keep saying, God thinks big.

Studying the other remains let the scientists make a rough estimate of when the cave filled with silt. Besides the Hominds, they found early versions of horses and cattle, gazelles, rhinos and predators.

Tools, Neanderthals, and Anthropometry

They found stone tools, too, like that set in the photo. Whoever made them used the Levallois technique.

Tools like that had been found mostly with Neanderthals at the time scientists started studying the Jebel Irhoud site.

We’re still quite sure that Neanderthals made tools like these. But so did a lot of other folks. We’re not sure who developed them first.

Scientists are still discussing how the technique was standardized across much of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

I figure that whoever invented the tech either passed the skill along to others, who swapped how-to tips with their neighbors.

Tweet! Tweet! — SHRIEK!

Barnum Brown, the team leader, dubbed the critter “Daptosaurus agilis,” and prepped the specimens for later extraction.

That didn’t happen. Scientists have priorities, like everyone else. The might-be-interesting lumps would have been a chore to work loose from the surrounding rock.

About three decades later, John Ostrom went fossil hunting in another part of Montana, finding more Deinonychus remains. He realized that Brown’s specimens were probably from the same sort of critter.

Cutting an excessively long story short, we’ve learned that Deinonychus was an 11-foot, 200-pound, feathered hunter. Think a nightmare version of roadrunners; with sharp teeth and sharper, oversize, claws.

Dinosaur Feathers?

(From RJPalmerArt, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(T. rex with feathers, and lips. Whether the critter had either is still debated.)

About T. rex, size, and feathers; we still don’t have a fossil that shows the whole critter and a clear impression of its hide. Many or most birds have scales and feathers. Maybe T. rex did, too.

Or maybe not. Critters have options for thermoregulation, regulating body temperature. Not that they decide to have feathers, fur, or whatever.

It’s not just animals. Some plants make their own heat. The Indian lotus, Nelumbo nucifera, for example, stays 20 °Centigrade, 36 °Fahrenheit, when it’s flowering.

The plant gets heat by ‘burning’ starch stored in its roots, consuming oxygen at a rate on a par with a hummingbird in flight.2

Some animals, like elephants, don’t need much in the way of hair or feathers. Gigantothermy, being really big, isn’t insulation, quite; but volume increases faster than surface area.

Other critters change how much heat they gain or lose by changing behavior. Textbooks will give examples like a dogs panting, or bears hibernating.

I see what humans do as a sort of behavioral temperature regulation. From that viewpoint, our habit of developing tech like cloth and HVAC is behavior: operating over long timescales. And that’s, you guessed it, yet again another topic. Topics.

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About Brian H. Gill

I'm a sixty-something married guy with six kids, four surviving, in a small central Minnesota town. I mostly write and make digital art. I'm only interested in three things: that which exists within the universe; that which exists beyond; and that which might exist.

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